


Dust from Gold

by MissyForPrimeMinister



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Memory Loss, Pete's World (Doctor Who), Sad Ending, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:00:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22275241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissyForPrimeMinister/pseuds/MissyForPrimeMinister
Summary: The Metacrisis Doctor and Rose adjust to their new universe and their evolving relationship. The Doctor soon finds that his human brain is failing, just like Donna's did, and Rose struggles to deal with his changing personality.
Relationships: Metacrisis Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

Deep in the heart of a TARDIS, an element called Marlenium decays, propelling the ship through the fabric of time. Its 130 protons make it highly unstable, and a responsible pilot will monitor its energy readouts at intervals of eleven hours.

The Doctor was proud to declare that the longest he had ever gone between measurements was sixteen days.

Well, that _had_ been the longest. The grand total was now twenty-seven days, twelve hours and… sixteen minutes? Seventeen? His sense of time had become hopelessly distorted. Of course there were no readouts to tend to now, no wires to drape around his neck as he darted around the console. No TARDIS. He was stuck.

“Tea’s ready.” Rose waited until they had made eye contact before addressing him. She was still avoiding his name.

“Coming.”

He put down the old clock he’d been fiddling with - “break that and you’ll get it in the neck,” he vaguely remembered Jackie telling him - and followed her to the kitchen. Their shoulders collided as they both went for the doorway and she flinched, almost imperceptibly.

He drew back. “After you.”

Rose smiled but there was no warmth in her eyes.

____

He had the same over-the-top smile, all teeth and raised eyebrows. Rose had always found it endearing, but it somehow felt different on this new version of him.

She wasn’t fond of the new suit. It was a dull, lifeless sort of blue that reminded her of the barren coastline. As if even he wasn’t convinced he was the same man.

As if she needed it rubbed in her face some more.

The day after they arrived here, Rose had insisted on doing the shopping alone. She browsed the racks of a department store with a name that was recognizable but slightly off, like so many things in this universe. She pulled out a sandy brown coat and studied it, peeking at the price tag. But what would she say to him?

She pictured the Doctor, draped in brown fabric, reading a newspaper at the kitchen table. Domesticity. It was sacrilegious to even imagine it.

Rose replaced the coat on the rack, smoothing out some wrinkles in the sleeves before turning away.

She was halfway home before she realized she had forgotten the groceries.

____

The Doctor pulled out a stool and hopped on theatrically, pushing off of the counter.

“I keep telling you you’ll break that.”

He just winked, silently taking the cup Rose nudged towards him. She wandered away to get milk and sugar, taking her time. “What were you working on in there?”

“Oh, just a… thing.” He waved dismissively. “Clockwork, basic stuff. Did you know that the first pendulum clock was built here in England?” He frowned. “No, the Netherlands! Me and my stupid head.”

He made a show of smacking his forehead, and winced as a wave of vertigo passed over him. He’d had a pounding headache for days. Travel between universes had some unfortunate effects on the body.

“Of course, who knows if that’s true here? Could have been Antarctica for all I know. What do you reckon?”

“Hmm,” Rose said noncommittally from beside the sink.

She seemed exhausted this morning, so he talked himself out of feeling hurt and took a sip of tea, flinching as it scalded his tongue. “Blimey! Bit hot, innit!”

That got Rose’s attention, her head jolting up at the exclamation.

He was still getting used to these echoes of Donna’s mannerisms. They were almost involuntary, like something deep in his mind was crawling out and vying for dominance. It was comforting to have his friend with him, but there was something unsettling about it. Rose certainly seemed to think so.

The Doctor studied the floor. “Anyway.”

Neither of them broke the silence.

____

It had been a week, and they had yet to sleep in the same room. Rose had offered, but the Doctor always wanted a few more hours for his latest project. Every room in the house was scattered with objects in various states of disassembly. His attention span certainly hadn’t been affected.

Rose wasn’t sure if he needed to sleep, even in this new body. He’d said he was still part Time Lord, after all. It was comforting to picture him tinkering away downstairs like he used to in the TARDIS. Rose shut her eyes and pretended she was in her room there, listening to the faint whoosh of the ship’s rotor. A distant siren pulled her out of her fantasy, but she was bone-tired and drifted off anyway.

She woke up parched sometime in the middle of the night. Blinking the bleariness from her eyes, Rose made her way down the stairs to the kitchen. She wondered if the Doctor was still working somewhere.

“Doctor?” she called softly, for fear of waking Tony. Although she had fought countless alien species, her parents’ wrath was not something she wanted to provoke tonight. There was no response from the Doctor.

As she passed through the living room with her glass of water, Rose found him fast asleep on the sofa.


	2. Chapter 2

Sleep wasn’t fair.

The Doctor waged a constant war against exhaustion as he read at the kitchen table late into the night. The bookshop around the corner had been profiting off him (or Rose, technically) for quite some time.

Tonight’s subject was ornithology. Pictures of finches and woodpeckers swam in front of his eyes as he fought to keep them open. Wingspan of 20-22 centimetres. Sitting on the porch with Rose, watching her refill the bird feeders. She was saying something but it sounded muffled. Why didn’t it make sense? _Wake up_.

Diurnal. Territorial. Watery black shapes danced across his peripheral vision, like the ghosts so long ago, when he had lost Rose the first time. Was he dreaming again? The Doctor pushed his chair out, bracing himself against the table while he regained his balance. This wasn’t doing him any good. And besides, sleep helped humans retain information. No harm in it.

Would he wake Rose if he lay next to her? Her door had a habit of squeaking… better not to risk it. Walking felt like wading through molasses as he found his way to the sofa in the next room, moving Jackie’s impressive pillow collection to one end. His legs didn’t fit comfortably, but he’d been in worse situations. There was a draft from the bay window that his old body would barely have registered.

The Doctor retraced his steps to the hallway and yanked open the linen closet. A pile of fitted sheets toppled down from the highest shelf.

“Bloody hell!”

He whipped his head around, half-expecting to find a startled person behind him. But the phrase had come from his mouth. He bit back the urge to chastise himself for swearing and shoved the misshapen pile of sheets back into the closet, making a mental note to refold them before Jackie woke up.

He carried a blanket back to the living room and decided not to close the blinds. The glow from the streetlamp was comforting.

The Doctor drew his legs toward his chest and closed his eyes.

* * *

Waking in the middle of the night had become a habit for Rose, and she decided to check on the Doctor while she was up. She set her glass of water on the side table and knelt beside the sofa, absently playing with the frayed edge of the blanket. The Doctor looked peaceful. Even in this human body, he normally jolted awake at the drop of a pin; she wondered how long he had stayed up. Her own exhaustion was catching up with her again, and she leaned her head against the sofa.

When she opened her eyes, faint stripes of daylight were coming through the open blinds and the Doctor was staring at her.

“Good morning,” he said cheerily.

“Morning,” she mumbled reflexively, sifting through her murky thoughts to determine why she was on the living room floor. The Doctor’s hand shot out to stop her head from crashing into the coffee table as she sat up.

“Thanks.”

“Would have left quite the bump.” He stood up with a groan, pushing the pile of blankets to the side and running a hand through his impressively disheveled hair. “Speaking of headaches, where on Earth does Jackie keep the medicine? Feels like my brain is about to explode. I can’t believe you people live like this.”

Rose rolled her eyes. “Uh… Shelf at the back of the pantry.” She winced at her husky voice and cleared her throat. “Can’t have the guests snooping at Dad’s parties.”

“Lovely! I’ve never taken painkillers on purpose before.” Rose caught a gleam in his eye, the same one she had noticed before he blew up the TARDIS lab for the seventh time. “Wonder if I’m still allergic to aspirin.”

“Don’t even think about it.”

The Doctor disappeared into the kitchen and Rose quickly smoothed down her hair, which was a frizzy mess from rubbing against the carpet. She probably looked awful.

“Morning, Rose,” Jackie called from the hallway, followed by a muffled yelp.

“Mum?”

“Did a bloody tornado pass through this closet?!”

* * *

The Doctor had stopped planetary invasions with less effort than it took to fold a fitted sheet. Other than that ordeal, the day was uneventful, and he spent the late afternoon in Pete’s study while the rest of the family prepared dinner. Pete had pulled him aside conspiratorially, saying he didn’t offer the key to just anyone, but the Doctor suspected he was just being kept at a safe distance from any kitchen appliances.

An hour later, there was a hesitant knock at the door.

“Doctor?”

He couldn’t help the grin that broke out across his face. “That’s me!”

“Dinner’s ready.”

The Doctor pulled out a chair next to Rose when they reached the dining room, and they started filling plates while Pete pulled Tony away from the television.

“Thought you didn’t like potato salad?” Rose asked, nudging him as he tried to inconspicuously take another serving.

He shrugged. “Must be adjusting.”

The truth was that he had gotten a bit of a taste bud transplant from Donna, but there was no reason to get hung up on technicalities when Rose was finally starting to recognize him again.

* * *

After dinner, Tony insisted that only the Doctor could help him with his maths worksheets. They moved at a snail’s pace, with Tony glancing longingly at the living room every few minutes. The Doctor didn’t blame him for losing focus; his own eyes were starting to blur from the sheer boredom of staring at the page. He looked out the window for a few seconds and tried to refocus, but he couldn’t seem to look straight at the numbers.

“All right Tony, I think we’ve done enough of these for tonight. What do you say we get ready for bed?”

The Doctor left Tony with his parents and crept into the pantry for another dose of paracetamol. Thankfully it seemed to agree with his physiology, although the pills made him quite drowsy.

He found himself at Rose’s bedroom door a few minutes later, wondering whether he was supposed to knock. He still felt like an intruder sometimes. Rose had never seemed this uncomfortable on the TARDIS, but even in those days, they had almost never slept in the same room.

Before he had a chance to decide, she opened the door and ushered him in.

“I saw your feet under the door. You know you can just come in?”

“I do now,” he replied, sitting down on the bed. He suddenly didn’t even have the energy to take off his suit, and he crawled under the covers while Rose brushed her teeth.

“You all right?”

He found that he was too exhausted for his usual ‘I’m always all right’ routine. “My head is killing me. I thought it would be gone by now.”

“Your head?”

“Ha ha.”

“Just give it time. It’s a lot to get used to.” She got under the covers beside him. “I used to get awful headaches when I started working at the department store. And that was just annoying customers. Can’t imagine having, what, half of another person in my head?”

“More like… three thirty-sevenths. But thank you.”

“Did you just make that up?”

“Maybe.”

The Doctor curled up beside Rose, sighing as she cradled his head against her chest. His dreams were tinged red at the edges. 


End file.
